Life on Salem Road

  Hornworm on volunteer tomato 9/8/2020 Holy smokes! It seems that the hornworms in my garden, which I had always assumed were TOMATO hornworms, are actually TOBACCO hornworms!  Not that it makes a great deal of difference to gardener me, but I just assumed that hornworms that munch on tomato plants would be tomato hornworms.   As I set out to find that Latin name for the hornworm, I decided to check to make sure that my hornworms really are tomato hornworms.  I spotted an article comparing the two on Margaret Roach's A Way to Garden -- I love her blog, her podcast, and her New York Times column -- so I dove in.  And when she described the fellow above -- seven white stripes with black edges and a red horn on his tail -- she was describing the tobacco hornworm. Her picture matches my picture.  And when I followed her link to the Entomology Department at the University of Florida , I discovered the tomato hornworm looked quite different! So now I can ...

Dwarf American Toad in prepared garden bed (9-5-2020) I've been moving lots of compost this week, preparing new no-till garden beds for a winter crop of greens.  A piece of corrugated cardboard had blown onto one of the beds, and when I lifted it yesterday, I found this Dwarf American Toad huddled underneath, doing his level best to blend in with the soil around him.  He did a fine job!  I encountered a very similar fellow in the general area a couple of weeks ago -- I wonder if he is the same one or if we have a colony? I identified him using Herps of Arkansas .  According to HOA,  only two true toads live in Arkansas, the Dwarf American Toad and the Fowler's Toad.  Both occur all over Arkansas, and both hybridize with other true toads. If you want to hear the Dwarf American Toad's call, check it out at HOA.  My speaker was turned up all the way -- I would recommend making sure yours is not before you listen:) I was puzzled that HOA did not have a sep...

  Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Garlic Chives 8/30/2020 Steven and were having coffee on the back porch this morning when I grabbed my phone and sprinted across the yard to get pictures of this lovely butterfly. He was enjoying the garlic chives blooming in the patch of various flowers, herbs, and vegetables that are tucked in alongside the asparagus bed.  I was quite pleased to be able to identify his sex, something I haven't been able to do before as I've been observing the Life on Salem Road.  He is distinguishable from the female because a female would have blue at the bottom of her forewing.  Butterflies at Home has a great article on Eastern Tiger Swallowtail coloration, with photos.  I'm now officially on the lookout for a female "dark morph."  One of the most interesting things about the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail is that the female is dimorphic.  That means that the females occur naturally in more than one form.  (Drilling down into dimorp...

Blue Winged Wasp on Tall Thoroughwort  in Chicken Yard 8/19/2020 Now there's a lot to unpack in this picture.  I snapped this in the Chicken Yard when I noticed that the plant -- which I now know is Tall Thoroughwort -- was covered by these amazing-looking wasps as well as a number of bees.  If you look in the upper right of the picture you'll see one of The Ladies -- I believe she is one of our California Whites.  Moving down the picture, you'll see two wasps:  the one on the left may be a Great Black Wasp, but I'm focusing today on the wasp on the right, a Blue Winged Wasp.  And lower in the picture, you'll see an unidentified species of bee.  I knew this plant that I had saved when I mowed and the chickens had allowed to survive in their Yard was a power pollinator and I had to know more about it! When I sat down to write this morning, out came my beautiful hard-back copy of Carl Hunter 's Wildflowers of Arkansas .  (When I put it on my Christm...

Fawn in front yard 8/13/2020 Update:  We spotted the Fawn still hanging around the body on Sunday evening.  I never heard from Arkansas Game & Fish.  Late Monday afternoon, I donned a respirator and covered the body with 50 pounds of lime and a good layer of straw. My vegetable garden has been invaded, with a loss of some tomato foliage and my pitiful Swiss Chard crop.  I've concluded that the Fawn is fending for himself. 8/23/2020. Mom and the Fawn having been sharing the Place on Salem Road with us this summer.  They have been terribly civilized, in that they have pretty much left the vegetable garden alone.  A foray into the young okra happened early on, and cucumber vines and tomato plants along the perimeter have been sampled, but other than that, they have pretty much limited themselves to eating the day lily buds.  I've been busy spraying deer repellent (nasty smelling stuff made of rotten eggs and garlic), but I have no illusions that the r...

Buttonweed in lawn 8/10/2020 This project is all about LEARNING about and NAMING the life I see every day, so I've chosen Buttonweed, a tiny wildflower that is currently blooming in my lawn.  It would be easy to walk by it and step on it and never even take note of it, as I have doubtlessly been doing for the 26 years we have lived on Salem Road. Now, "lawn" is a lofty term for the grass in our yard, as I strictly share my daddy's attitudes about lawns -- water, fertilizer, and pesticides (insecticides or herbicides) are for crops, not grass.  We're not farming grass here.  And science agrees that we need to stop treating lawns like crops. Steven and I are extremely sparing in our use of pesticides here on Salem Road anyway, as we are concerned for our pollinators.  And our "lawn" is a laissez faire mixture of pasture grasses and weeds.  One of my goals is to move it more toward a natural lawn that supports our native species of plants and animals, but ...